


Boy #1

by Laika



Series: Alight/Boy #1 [2]
Category: Dong Bang Shin Ki, Super Junior
Genre: Crossover, Explicit Language, M/M, Pre-debut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-04
Updated: 2009-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:06:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laika/pseuds/Laika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junsu and Sungmin meet as trainees at SM, and Sungmin learns about sacrifice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy #1

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel to Alight or a standalone one-shot. Originally posted on Livejournal three years ago (?!) and reproduced here for posterity. No beta so any mistakes are entirely my own. Thanks for reading!

Boy#1

 

 

Plumeria-petal lips curve into a smile that takes no prisoners; Hands in the dark, feverish-hot with secrets kept; the sense of profundity that only strikes the profoundly inexperienced, teenage intent wavering like vapour daydreams of water on hot asphalt: These are my memories of Junsu.

 

Not that it was always like that. In the beginning, I hung out with him halfway out of necessity. We were training together anyways, and he lived at home, which was a bonus. Noble, I know.

 

The grade-school novelty of dorm tends to wear threadbare thin after a while, and Hyukjae and I were permanent fixtures at Junsu's house, playing charades as furniture in case Mrs. Kim suddenly noticed her darling twin boys were consuming twice as much food. My best friend's best friend. In the beginning, he was a sweet kid with a baby face that made  _me_  feel like Vin fucking Diesel while still handing me my ass at Halo in convenient, bite-sized pieces.

 

I can barely remember how the beginning of our story goes.

 

I remember eating sticky-cold melon slices on his bedroom floor, ceiling fan half-heartedly churning stagnant summer air, exposed skin chafing on carpet. The kind of heat that hangs heavy over your head, damp and cloying and fucking uncomfortable and there is  _exactly nothing_  you can do to make it any better. And when the stars and our schedules aligned properly, there were four of us – Junsu, Junho, Hyukjae and I.

 

I remember feeling jealous.

 

He’s the kind of boy where all he has to do is  _look_  at you the right way, and you’re done for, a goner. Intimate, bone-melting, like you’re already best friends, catching fire somewhere in the bottom of my stomach and warming me from the navel up. How do I make this sound less gay? We were young. He wasn’t popular, per se, but he had his inner-circle. And oh, I wanted to be in it.

 

 

\---

 

“No, no, no!” He laughs, and shoves his brother away with both hands. Sweatglazed and on the express train to sunstroke, we convene directly under the midday sun like the stupid teenage boys that we are. Melanoma and dehydration are just ghost stories to scare kids, and we all know ghosts disappear in daylight. Junsu points with the football. “Go over there, with Hyukjae.” And Junho makes that sulky face that they take turns using, but he goes.

 

“Fine, but you’re gonna lose, ‘Su.”

 

“Tell me: isn’t it hard to run with your giant ego weighing you down?” Junsu snaps.

 

“You’re about to find out.”

 

“Tch.” An eyeroll that is meant for me alone and his whisper is conspiratorial. “I don’t really care that much if we win or not…” Eyes warm like the sunbleached sky. He smells a lot like artificial coconut. And that smile… Man, fucking forget sunstroke. “I just like you better,” he grins.

 

Even if it's a shameless lie - because if there's one thing Junsu hates, it's losing - my cheeks flush, and it has nothing to do with the heat.

 

 

\---

 

 

Still, our ranks dwindle.

 

“You’re still coming, aren’t you, Sungminnie?”

 

How can I say no to that face? Even knowing exactly what I’m getting myself into - sulking fits and temper tantrums galore. Hyukjae is in high demand for dance gigs and Junho joined some baseball camp, leaving Junsu to alternate between heartbrokenness and jealousy every 0.4 seconds and leaving me to collect the pieces – because obviously I never could say no to him.

 

In his room, he presses something into my palm.

 

“What do you think? I don’t have to pay for the plan, but it was like, three and a half paycheques.” He beams. I turn the cellphone over in my hands like a skipping rock – glossy-white and perfect down to the last backlit key, shining phosphorescent, space-age sigils. “And it has a camera,” he points out proudly. Because Junsu’s last phone was practically prehistoric, this is an important detail. “Well, don’t you think we should christen it?” he asks, with a grin spreading slow like honey melting in the sun.

 

Why would I  _want_  to say no?

 

But I almost, almost do. When his face ducks in close enough to feel his breath damp-soft on my lips, I just about push him off his fucking bed. But he just laughs his strange barking laugh, musical fragments - more string than wind, to me - caught in eddies of fan-produced wind. “Don’t you ever go on Cyworld? Girls love this kind of thing. When we’re famous, these pictures are going to be priceless.” He cocks his head, holding the phone aloft, pursing his lips. ” And besides that, we’re pretty cute.” I roll my eyes, because cute is the last thing either of us needs more of. I mean, we could fucking bottle it and sell it and be set for life. But he persists, and I endure - in the least sincere sense of the word.

 

I don’t remember the transition – the necessary steps between cute and decidedly homosexual. I guess things like this are gradual, a slow inevitable shift, infinitesimal and exact. Tectonic plates would know exactly what I’m talking about.

 

We pose to the kitschy shutter click of the phone’s camera. Even I can’t deny that we’re suited to this sort of thing, the cute poses, the fake kisses, commandments inscribed in permanent ink into our DNA whether we like it or not. And when he finally kisses me, for real, in the name of our future stardom, it feels soft and subtle because he isn’t really trying very hard but mostly it feels like a revelation. And I guess he probably realizes we’ve gone too far too, because he clams up and closes the phone.

 

“I don’t think that one is going on Cyworld.”

 

It could have been an accident, I guess.

 

But I choose to believe that it wasn’t.

 

\---

 

We stand together at the bus stop, and he stares at the sky, ochre-tarnished-black. I bump him with my shoulder, and he blinks hard, lips parted, before he flashes me a weak smile.

 

“Monsoon season,” he murmurs under his breath, his only explanation, and I wonder exactly how he can tell with the flawless dusk stretching out overhead. His words evaporate into the night to reunite with dim wisps of streetlight and thrumming cicada songs, fellow denizens of the dark. His hand brushes mine and we both pretend it doesn’t, just like we pretend that I’m not holding my breath, waiting for the next move that doesn’t come.

 

And the next night, like clockwork: the sky unfolds and the streets flood, and Junsu loses his phone.

 

\---

 

I must have dragged him halfway across that fucking city. Every classroom, every coffee shop, every single place he could have even potentially occupied in the past six months. I pull him along behind me, fingers closed tight on his, but he just sulks, silent and moody and dear god, if he bursts into tears I swear I'm leaving him on the fucking curb. But he doesn't, and for some reason this makes it hard - no, impossible for me to leave him. And when the guy at the convenience store across from the library politely reminds us that we’ve already asked him - repeatedly - we grudgingly agree that it’s pretty much a lost cause.

 

More than a week passes, and the phone bill that arrives reveals nothing. For all we know his cell has vanished into the world of odd socks and spare change and words spirited away into the dusk - gone forever.

 

\---

 

Finally, I can’t help it: I ask if he’s upset because someone could find the pictures.

 

He just laughs at me like it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. “No, I don’t really care. Isn’t that weird?” Junsu trails off, plucking a leaf from a branch overhead, showering us with fat drops of residual rainwater. Nothing as bad as the torrential downpour we are currently escaping, though. I don't know how anyone could ever find this atmosphere romantic. The whole making-out-in-the-rain scene? Complete bullshit. Maybe it would help if it was spring, with the plum tree sheltering us in full bloom and laden with plush-violet blossoms – or I’m still thinking like I would if he were a girl. Fatal mistake number one.

 

I scrunch up my nose as a cold tendril of wet snakes down inside my collar. He catches my expression and smiles, the first ray of sunlight I’ve seen in days, literally or figuratively. "We could always take more,” he murmurs, glancing at me furtively like there’s even a make-believe chance that I would deny him. I sigh.

 

Why does he like me?

 

“Why do you look at me like you want to rip my clothes off?” he retorts, flicking the twist of leaf at my shirt. It makes it halfway before it falters midair and falls. I blink at him, because there isn’t really anything you can say to that, especially when he’s a little bit right.

 

Or definitely, one hundred percent right. “I’m just kidding!” he gasps, exasperated, punching me in the shoulder. I punch him back, hard. He yelps and goes to hit me again, but he stops and does the head tilt that I refuse to admit kills me every time. His eyes shine, curious but warm - a precursor.

 

“Unless it’s true. Isn’t it?”

 

I could deny it, but I don’t.

 

He continues to stare at me. I wait for the signs – a change of pressure, the promise of precipitation, a whisper of things to come. The brink between summer and something entirely different, the inky depths of the unpredictable sky. The wind blows warm – but I’m pretty sure that’s a bad thing. Batten down the hatches.

 

And I'm not sure if I’m prepared, because the things we could lose in this flood can’t be replaced with any number of paycheques.

 

“Okay.”

 

Okay what?

 

“Don’t make me say it again,” he sighs, and grabs my hand.

 

 

\---

 

It turns out that he’s serious. And, it turns out, so am I.

 

And now he’s soaked from braving the rain, so ripping his clothes off is not only the game plan and my wish come true but also extremely practical. He stares up at me from the bed, cross-legged, eyes syrupy dark amber. I lean down, brushing beads of rain from his eyelashes.

 

I know this look: the one that says that I am his and he’s known it from the first fucking moment that we met.

 

Peeling off his shirt, I ask him if this is really what he wants. He only smiles like that is  _definitely_  the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. But stripping off his jeans, his boxers, I’m holding my breath again and so is he, but for different reasons. He's beautiful all over - polished and smooth, the colour of late-July evenings and expanses of beach. But he bites his lip.

 

“I’ve never –“

 

But neither have I. It shouldn’t matter.

 

And if it does, he's doing his best to fake it, because he's pulling me down, taut denim pressing against hot flesh. The look we share is shocked but blissful, undiscovered territories unveiling themselves before our imagination, like being dropped blindly in the middle of Eden, feeling our way with our hands. And he slides bare thighs over my hips, anchoring me in place, and if it's this good just like this feeling him hard through my jeans, then it's only going to get better from here, right? And his lips on mine, surprisingly sweet and delicate considering where my hands are.

 

He's shy, uncertain, unpredictable, but deft fingers dart over my chest, my stomach, under my shirt. Hesitantly licking rainwater from his cheek, I ask if he’s changed his mind, and he shakes his head. Flushing incarnadine, the sun setting over his skin. He shifts ever-so-slightly against me, almost apologetically.

 

Junsu unfolds for me like the sky, like plum blossoms in bloom, but I can tell that he’s fucking terrified, trembling under my hands. Strangely, I'm not worried at all, wielding covertly-obtained knowledge like ancient artefacts - gingerly but with reverence, tracing a finger down the inside of his thigh. His breath catches.

 

Not all the way, I reassure him. Just practice. A trial run.

 

One, then two – I guide his own fingers with my hand. And he’s so beautiful, exquisitely intense like when he sings, eyebrows furrowed. His breath is uneven but slow, and I feel like we must be missing the point. He arches into the mattress, but it’s out of frustration, not enjoyment.

 

“I give up,” he hisses. “You do it, Sungmin.”

 

If he wants me to.

 

“It has to be you.”

 

Like I would even say no.

 

And he’s right. It’s different when it’s my hand, my fingers, while my other hand around his cock establishes a rhythm he can follow. At first he makes the same face, eyes closed tight – but at some point I manage to coax him back over into pleasurable territory, because he relaxes, breath escaping through glistening parted lips, an exodus. I ask him if he’s okay and he smiles, but it’s different. Slow and wanton and it almost doesn’t matter that he isn’t touching me, because it feels like I could come just from watching him. The rasp of his breath, tangible as a caress, and his head falling back, and my name – over and over.  _Sungmin, Sungmin, Sungmin._

 

I press my lips against the hollow of his throat and feel the last of the hesitation melt from his voice.

 

\---

 

 

“Hyukjae should know.”

 

No, he absolutely fucking should  _not._

 

"You're ashamed." I'm not ashamed. Well, not  _that_ ashamed. More like fucking terrified that anyone will find out, ever. Can you imagine either of us trying to unconvince the general public of our homosexuality? It would be about as likely as me becoming prime minister of Japan. I mean, we want to be in a fucking  _boyband._  Not even just coincidentally already in a boyband, but actively pursuing it as a career of our own free will, because that doesn't sound fucking gay at all. We'd be doomed. More than doomed - we would probably fade into the dim history of SM dropouts, branded for life.

 

"You don't trust him." His eyes touch mine only briefly, the tide touching the shore, an ebb of accusation and then gone again. It sucks because Hyukjae is my friend too, obviously, but he'll always be Junsu's  _best_  friend. Anyways, it's not that I don't trust Hyukjae to not tell - I just don't trust himto notdismember me and dump me in the Han River for violating his best friend.

 

"You don't trust _me_." That one stings most of all. I trust Junsu to remain sweet and pliable and way too trusting. I trust him to want something better than what we've had, which is almost a month of strictly-confidential secret sex. Super-amazing stellar sex, to be honest, and way better than I expected of the ambitious fumbling of two virgin boys, but somewhat lacking in emotional investment. I mean, I can't really blame him.

 

But I know he's never had a girlfriend, and it's like all of his expectations have transferred to me - but it's not like that, and life isn't a drama. Confession, courting, curtains drop. More like guys looking at you funny in the change room, assuming that just because you happen to like one boy that you'd fuck them too –

 

I can't keep him happy forever.

 

\---

 

He is mad at me, and his body language confirms it – although if I ever revealed to him that he is  _almost_ hurting me I’m sure he would never fucking touch me again. But our fear balances out, maintaining the status quo, an equilibrium of sorts.

 

He's mad because I insist on keeping us a secret and yet I insist on a rendezvous in the changing room after practice. Low-key, top-secret - public place. Risky but better than burning this image into Junsu's mother's retinas forever, as we have come dangerously close to doing in the past. "I just don't understand why it's life or death and yet not life or death enough to be somewhere more private," he seethes, but he loosens his grip on my hips just a little bit to show he cares. Either that or to prevent bruising. I'm trying to find finger holds in the grout between the tiles.

 

"I just don't understand what we're doing here."

 

I make a quip about male anatomy lessons, and regret it instantly.

 

"That's not what I mean," he growls, and I shiver.

 

I'm not certain if this is the place or time for this discussion, darling.

 

And then the locker room door opens, and I'm sure of it.

 

\---

 

Even if I survive this mortification, I don’t know if I’ll live through the look that Junsu is giving me.

 

The trainer is yelling something incoherently and trying to cover his eyes at the same time. Separate this instant. No, don't. Don't move. Don't - Just, I'm going to leave, and you are going to get dressed and come straight to the sports medicine office. You have two minutes or I'm calling security and they can... deal with you. Revulsion mixed with power-tripping-bastardism. Great combination. Junsu is burying his head against my shoulder, and I can feel his breath coming too hard, too damp - and no wonder, because I can feel our respective futures crashing and burning, entirely out of our control.

 

And worse - when he looks up but not at me - I can see the suspicious bright wet-gleam in his eyes, the closest I have ever seen him come to tears, and there is nothing, nothing I can say to make it better. Are they out of shame, or in the fond memory of our crushed dreams? I don't even know.

 

"We shouldn't have-"

 

He slips away - in more ways than one. He was never mine, not really.

 

\---

 

"They say.."

 

He stops.

 

"They say that if you coerced me into it, it's okay. I mean, not okay, but not as bad. Maybe I won't be kicked out automatically." He doesn't say what the punishment could be for me. He doesn't have to."You know, I actually think that they want to call it rape, except I was on top." He laughs, but it is the most miserable sound I have ever heard - the polar opposite of amusement. "I have some time to think about it. And you know, I'm not a liar, Sungmin." And he looks at me - full eye contact, blazing with sincerity, earnest honesty. "I would tell them the truth. I would tell them about us. And I would deal with the consequences."

 

I'm shocked. I know there is a decision to be made here, but all of my earthly desires point to a vehement  _yes._ There is literally nothing I wouldn't give to grab him right now and tell him anything he wants to hear to keep him, to feel him envelop me with that humming-vibrant intensity -

 

But the only thing I'd be sacrificing isn't mine to give.

 

He continues, bravely. "But honestly.. I don't know what the truth is. I know it wasn't all your idea, obviously, but lately... It feels like nothing - less than nothing. A daydream. If one of us died before being found out, it would be the same as if it never happened."

 

That bitter laugh again.

 

"I'm not trying for girl-drama - I just need to know what I should tell them. And you have to tell me, because I don't know."

 

His eyes meet mine again. He was never shy, except that once - but I'm already saying my farewells, making peace with that chapter. I know what I have to say, because otherwise I will never be able to live with myself. It could have been different, but it isn't.

 

"What is the truth, Sungmin?"

 

The truth is that his passion belongs to his music, his singing -

 

But this isn't what I tell him, because he would deny it. He would risk everything because that’s what kind of boy he is.

 

And that’s why I know he’ll make it. That’s why I can’t tell him the truth.

 

And in his eyes, the betrayal – Just fucking rip out my soul already, because that’s what it feels like.

 

And when I hear him sing - from behind closed doors, and then, later, from the TV in the next room, or the radio, or backstage - I remember, and it outweighs everything, making what I did to him almost tolerable:

 

His soul is still intact, after all - forever his to keep.


End file.
